Rakowitz’s replica, White man got no dreaming (2008), was made in collaboration with an Aboriginal community in Sydney whose dwellings had been condemned, using materials from their crumbling homes.

The project was part of a successful campaign for new housing and typifies the interaction with communities at the heart of Rakowitz’s work.

The artist’s concern with cultural destruction then comes to the fore with What dust will rise? (2012), stone books he carved with the help of Afghan artisans from the ruins of two 6th-century Bamiyan Buddhas – whose destruction at the hands of the Taliban in 2012 provoked global outrage.

Each of the books is a monument to those lost in the second world war.

Life-sized recreations of murals obliterated by Islamic State in 2015 are also on display, along with other objects which form part of The invisible enemy should not exist.

In the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, thousands of archaeological artefacts were stolen or wiped out.

Rakowitz remakes them from packaging such as date syrup cans – a reference to how war and sanctions have decimated the date industry in Iraq, once a lucrative export second only to oil.

Another work on show is The Breakup (2010-present), which sees Rakowitz, an ardent Beatles fan, superimpose ephemera relating to the band’s break-up over the Arab-Israeli conflict and the collapse of Pan-Arabism.

In 2006, the artist asked citizens of post-Soviet Budapest how they would fill the derelict building sites that dot their city “like missing teeth”.

Their imaginative architecture is displayed as if floating in mid-air, ending the exhibition with a collectively envisioned future.

Whitechapel Gallery director and the show’s co-curator Iwona Blazwick said: “From the Assyrian winged bull he placed in Trafalgar Square to the stone books he had carved from the ruins of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas, sculptor, detective and some time cook Michael Rakowitz turns the disasters of war into beacons of knowledge and hope.”

Michael Rakowitz runs from 4 June until 25 August at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Tickets start from £9.50 with concessions.

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